Bottling XIV

I carried the beer downstairs on Thursday or Friday so it had time to settle, then bottled it tonight.  It was a bit tricky as I ran out of bottles but managed to do it easily enough, final gravity say 1014 @ 20C.  Priming sugar was 350g of glucose, boiled in 2l water.  Tasting, of course, while bottling - very good, lightly hopped as expected but crisp clean malt flavour but no character from the dry hopped Cascade yet, that may come later like it did in the last one.  Filled 55 x 0.5l bottles, which must be a record!

Carrying the fermented beer downstairs was heavy & awkward, think I'll get a pipe and try to run it downstairs straight after cooling.  this would have the effect of cooling it further and helping to aerate it.  Hmmm, could be a good idea that, but I think in the end it's probably going to be easier to brew entirely in the cellar.

Need to buy more glucose.
Check hops in cellar, there are some Fuggles and East Kent Goldings open and a packet of something else closed.

Stores

Ingredients available:

Malts
4kg Vienna malt
4Kg Pilsner
5Kg Cara-amber 60EBC
5Kg Cara-hell 25EBC
500g Munich malt
1.5Kg Malted Wheat
800g Sauermalz
1Kg Chocolate malt

Hops

100g Fuggles
50g Cascade pellets

Review:
~50g Challenger 6.5% alpha (old)
~60g East Kent Goldings 6.3% alpha (old)

Number XIV Fermentation & Notes

Throughout today very vigorous fermentation, blowing out of the top of the barrel.  Used the airlock to catch the blow off and discard it.  Really going very hard.

Here's a nice ebook on Google Books:The Illustrated Guide to Brewing Beer: A Comprehensive Handboook of ...
 By Michael Howell, Matthew SchaeferIt has a good section on malts, which is how I found it.

Notes

1. Make a right angled copper pipe to attach to boiler for draining hot water into mash.
2. Need something to put mash tun on during mash - used a pot but this was not too stable.  Step ~ 50cm high.
3. Need to attach a hose to the mash tun tap for draining into pan

Number IV - Preparation & Brewing

As ever Number IV will be an ale, light golden brown coloured, with distinct hop character - some bitterness but much aroma and flavour.  It would be a bonus if there's a subtle fruity or ester flavour and for this I'll try dry hopping with Cascade pellets.  The alcohol content will be about 4% and there will be about 30 litres of it.  In fact just like No. XIII, the only difference being I'm going to swap the malts over - and add1Kg of Munich malt to try to get up to a full 30l fermenter.

 Ingredients & Notes

Compared to previous brews the grain bill will be a touch more at 7.5Kg of malt, to ensure it's got the alcohol content I'm after, and the hops are chosen by what I've got - Target & East Kent Goldings for the brew (bittering and aroma) and then for something a bit different I'm going to also dry hop with Cascade at 1g/litre in the fermentation barrel.

The Recipe
Malts:
4Kg Vienna malt - base 1 colour
2Kg Pilsner malt - base 2, light base
1Kg Munich, malty sweetness
500g Malted wheat for head retention
100g Sour malt to lower the pH and aid mashing

Hops
Boil:
50g Target  9.7% alpha, open packet from 2007

Aroma & Flavour, 5 minutes before end of boil
46g East Kent Goldings  4.95% alpha last 15 min

Dry
Cascade pellets 5.9% alpha at 1g/litre into brewing barrel before adding yeast.  29g added.

Adjuncts
15g Irish moss in the boil, last 15 minutes

Mash schedule

30 minutes each at 65C, 72C and 76C.
Boil 90 minutes.

Brewing

1. 17:30 - Started heating 18l water and grinding grains.  Used the drill for the grinding which worked relatively well.
2. Calculated that for 8Kg grain at ~25C will need to add ~12 litres water at 70C
3. As the water was a bit hotter than this I added 4l cold water, this was a bit too much perhaps
4. 18:30 Water @70C run onto grains, temperature stable at 65C - NOTE to overestimate a bit in future to compensate for cooling at the bottom of the tun.  Heat another 10l water to 90C.
5. 19:00 Run another 6l water onto grains - mash not hot enough so drain bottom and re-heat in pan
6. 19:15 Reached 72C more or less...
7. 19:45 Added more water, actually overflowed the tun.  Need to save a bit of space in future, probably best by avoiding the cold water at the start.  Still, with a full tun like this the mash looks good, not too thick, with this amount of grain.
8. 20:00 More heating and comfortably at 76C
9. 20:15 Swapped the excess I drained during the overflow, reheated the drain and added back to mash.
10. 20:30 Never was an iodine test so clear for complete conversion.  Happy!  Leave mash until 20:45
11. 20:45 Boil started - also pan on cooker.  Boiler too full, takes a long time to heat.
12. 23:00 Boil done, start cooling, added 4l cold water, primarily to cool the wort further, still too hot at 30C.
13. OG is about 1048, but then added another 2l cold water.
14. Added 29g Cascade hop pellets.
15. 24:00 All done, yeast pitched at 25C, hopefully not too hot.
16. 24:30 Signs of fermentation - magic!  That's fast!

Stores

Ingredients available:

Malts
8kg Vienna malt
6Kg Pilsner
5Kg Cara-amber 60EBC
5Kg Cara-hell 25EBC
2Kg Munich malt
2Kg Wheat
900g Sauermalz
1Kg Chocolate malt

Hops

100g Fuggles
40g East Kent Goldings 4.95% alpha
50g Target 9.7% - Use quickly, open & old
80g Cascade pellets
~50g Challenger 6.5% alpha (old)
~60g East Kent Goldings 6.3% alpha (old)

Number XIII - First Taste

Not bad at all! This bottle was put into the fridge (ie. very cold so no fermentation would happen) on Saturday evening, having been bottled on Tuesday night, so it's perhaps no surprise that it's lacking a bit of carbonation even for an ale.

The flavour is good, the bitterness is about right, the hop flavour seems characteristic to the EKG used, but the dry hopped Cascade haven't come through much at all. I wonder what went wrong there. It's also a bit cloudy, not that that bothers me much but having a nice clear beer is just better and previous beers have been much better.

It's a bit less alcoholic than I feared, but that's a good thing - I thought that I'd produced a monster but it tastes around 5% which is still more than I wanted but within the bounds of normal. All in all I hope that some survives for the Brew Club meeting on the 25th.

Number XIII - Bottling

Worked well enough, I used Chemipro Oxi to sterilise the bottles, I hope it has worked as it was all done a bit quickly and I wasn't quite so careful as I usually am to make sure the bottles are clean. May be a surprise or two in there. It also said on the box that rinsing wasn't necessary but on the outside the bottles were covered in a nasty white residue without rinsing, so the first four bottles were filled unrinsed, the rest were swilled out with cold water.

Bottling sugar was 90g of glucose, boiled for 15 minutes, then cooled and added to barrel. A small amount of this did get spilled, otherwise all went smoothly - now 40 bottles of beer downstairs. Temperature is around 12C. Guess a week of secondary fermentation will be enough before a first test, perhaps at the weekend.